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Saturday, December 06, 2008

X-Infernus #1 (of 4)

C.B. Cebulski & Giuseppi Camuncoli

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Get passed that pretty embarrassing cover featuring the swiveling female exposing both T AND A, and this four issue X-Men mini-series has some potential. X-Infernus is intended as a sequel to the Inferno crossover from the 90's, although this event is much smaller in scale, contained, as far as I know, to this one book. X-Infernus features Illyana Rasputin in Limbo, where she's this soulless horned monster leading hordes of demons on a quest to track down her lost soul sword and blood stone amulet, which were forged from her soul and, she reasons, rightfully belong to her following Belasco's death. The scenes with Illyana in Limbo are pretty impressive. I'm not much of a fan of Camuncoli's art overall, but the panels in this Hellish dimension are kind of freaky, especially Illyana herself, who's really a complete monster at this point, doing things you'd never imagine Colossus's quiet little "Snowflake" do, barbarous and cold. The scenes in Limbo go back and forth with the Uncanny X-Men team, where Colossus is upset at the lack of progress in reaching his sister, and Nightcrawler is assisting Pixie in getting a handle on her teleportation skills (which turn out to be pretty impressive). The exchange between Colossus and Peter is a little over the top, which is a shame since the book opens with it, and there really should be an emotional connection coming from the scene, what with Peter's sister being the focus of the story and all. But it's silly and executed pretty poorly. However, after that initial scene, the focus really does come around to Pixie, as she has a soul dagger that makes her go a little crazy ala Inferno, and those moments more than make up for any earlier shortcomings in the issue. Overall, a decent start to the mini-series. I like the focus on Pixie and Illyana. I think if it keeps going in that direction, this could be a fun, creepy little story.